Hi,
my children are 2, 3, and 7. My seven year old was diagnosed with autism shortly after his vaccinations. This may be a coincidence but it made me nervous about giving my other two children the vaccinations. Do they have to have them?

26th February 2014, 06:55 AM

ljmarsden

Dear angel0284,

Thank you very much for your post.

I'm sorry to hear that your son was diagnosed with autism possibly as a side-effect to his vaccinations. Do you know which vaccination he had before the autism diagnosis? The vaccine-autism debate has been going on for some time (as I'm sure you are aware) - particularly with regard to the MMR vaccine and it is still a contentious issue.

I feel that, as parents, we need to consider the likelihood of our child contracting a particular disease. This will depend on the incidence of the disease in the population in which we live. We also need to look carefully at the symptoms (and probability of these symptoms when contracting the disease) as well as the risks associated with the vaccines (and the probability of suffering from these risks). I believe that we need to consider each child individually; taking into account any additional medical problems they may have. Vaccination is a personal choice for each family and each child they have.